The BP Travel Award is a given to an artist to enable them to experience working in a different environment on a project related to portraiture. The BP Travel Award 2016 was won by Lithuanian artist Laura Guoke for her proposal to travel to refugee camps in Ritsona, Greece. Richard McLure speaks to Guoke about the project and how she documented the faces and stories behind the statistics.…

Claude Cahun lived her life in a spirit of rebellion and defiance. From her precocious teenage years as Lucy Schwob, defying conventional ideals of beauty and femininity with her shaven head and male attire, to her direct resistance of German occupying forces, she actively worked against the suppression of liberty and freedom - a life of resistance, which is encapsulated by the portrait above, taken in May 1945.…

The National Portrait Gallery - and museums and galleries throughout Britain - welcome hundreds of thousands of students of all ages who come to learn from, and enjoy our Collection. Many of them will be studying art history, but now it is proposed the subject be dropped from the A-level syllabus in England from 2018 with the result that it will vanish from the curriculum in state schools.…

Currently on display in ‘Aubrey Beardsley: Artist and Aesthete’ is an iconic portrait of the notorious illustrator Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) adopting the pose of a gargoyle. The gargoyle in question, known as ‘Le Stryge’ or ‘The Vampire’, sits on the south tower of Notre Dame Cathedral overlooking Paris and Tour St Jacques, his beaked profile cupped in the long fingers of his hands.…